Hi allRichard and myself played through a couple of games of Osprey`s Sci-Fi shooty-fest `Horizon Wars`.First game saw us come to the conclusion that the gradual whittling away of armour and the accompanying record-keeping gets a bit tedious. It reminded me of `Full Thrust` in that the game has a lot of excellent points but watching your forces slowly bleed to death once defeat is assured is a bit of a pain. Much better that things go all shooty-boombastic like they do in the epic `Epic:Armageddon` which is epic an` proper bo selecta an` that.

I understand that they`re going to relaunch Epic, I hope they won`t make it into a corporate boondoggle for separating fanboys` from their cash and placing a low premium on enjoyment. Reminds me of when Ridley Scott first reduxed Blade Runner; greatness shone through. But by the fifth and sixth `directors cut` you just wished he`d stopped at the first one.

Back at the ranch. Richard and I agreed `house rules` for HW whereby a critical hit rolls for random damage, similar to the system in `A Call to Arms` and we got more smoking wreckage in 45 mins than we got in the first game of over two hours.And smoking wreckage, after all, IS the point of sci-fi gaming.

That was it, I new there was something that put me off when I read the rules, it was the constant chip chip chip at the rock, way it worked.

I imagine the relaunch of epic wont be messed about with, I reckon it will just be a big box with rules and cardboard buildings and 2 opposing plastic armies, most likely guard and orcs. They know the existing rule book has a big fan base and the other rereleased games, space hulk and bloodbowl were direct copies of the original with shiny new miniatures.

My biggest preference for epic is simply to do with the way they handle suppression, very few games do, and it's a massive difference to how a unit can react, and the fact that ALL units in the game suffer its problems.

On the subject of SciFi I've been digging out my Starship Troopers again. My initial thoughts were for SST based on Chain of Command, but IABSM! might be a better fit for 150 bugs on the table at once (plus 5 tankers 3 Plasma bugs and 20 Hoppers)

Strange, I find myself looking at Epic stuff a lot lately, although it seems to get very high prices on Evil Bay for very little shiney

Pun intended...

Realistically, I need to get the 15mm sci-fi on the table at least once before even considering another scale in the same period

Cheers, Ross

To be fair, some of them were already closer to 8mm, and the vehicles were always undersized.If you do take the plunge, let me know what your looking for, I have boxes of this stuff. It was so bad I sold 9 titans as a job lot, I still have around 20 of them.

Strange, I find myself looking at Epic stuff a lot lately, although it seems to get very high prices on Evil Bay for very little shiney

Pun intended...

Realistically, I need to get the 15mm sci-fi on the table at least once before even considering another scale in the same period

Cheers, Ross

To be fair, some of them were already closer to 8mm, and the vehicles were always undersized.If you do take the plunge, let me know what your looking for, I have boxes of this stuff. It was so bad I sold 9 titans as a job lot, I still have around 20 of them.

OK, if I was to jump in at the deep end and start yet another army in yet another scale I'll let you know